


you won't find me

by rainekind



Category: Blades in the Dark (Roleplaying Game), Original Work
Genre: Heavy Angst, Hurt/Comfort, Multi, Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder - PTSD
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-03-06
Updated: 2020-12-11
Packaged: 2021-02-23 06:07:28
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 6
Words: 8,851
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23040322
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/rainekind/pseuds/rainekind
Summary: Persephone Aisa has been known by many names.
Kudos: 1





	1. partial ( choir version ) - ólafur arnalds

**Author's Note:**

> Hello, friends. This is something I've been working on for a while. It started out as a one-off to explore the backstory of my Blades in the Dark character from an ongoing campaign, and has since evolved into something much longer than anticipated. I put it here in case anyone was interested, as I have an RP blog for Persephone at huntershowl.tumblr.com.
> 
> TRIGGER AND CONTENT WARNINGS  
> This work deals with physical, sexual, and emotional abuse, as well as heavy themes of PTSD, limb loss, death, and depictions of violence. I will preface each chapter with whatever warnings are necessary for it. I want to make sure everyone's comfortable and not throw anyone into a potentially triggering situation.

Rainwater from the day’s on-and-off showers dripped from a jutting drainpipe, collecting soot and dirt as it slid between cobblestones before finding its resting place in a pothole. A portly woman wrapped in a thick wool coat sidestepped the pothole with haste as she walked beside her husband. The two were making a beeline for the sweets shop across the street, hoping to get out of the rain as soon as they could; the lady’s coat looked expensive, and she probably didn’t want to ruin it.

“I swear,” she murmured, pulling the fabric tight around her body, “we hear more and more about that Hellhound every day. It’d be nice to hear some other news once in a while.”

Her husband hummed. It was a cautious noise, a fussy sort of ‘mm’ out his nose that made his bristly mustache flutter. “I heard she grows fangs if you get her angry. Dusker saw it happen.”

“Dusker is a drunk.”

“He was stone-cold when he saw that mad dog tear apart a man with her bare hands. You don’t forget that kind of thing. He swore she had fangs. And red eyes – inky hell, I believe him.” He sniffed, rubbing his nose with the back of one wool sleeve.

The woman and her husband had no idea that the aforementioned mad dog sat crouched in between the sweet shop’s roof and window moulding, listening as they stepped inside.

Fangs. Red eyes. The imaginations of the terrified.

“Mad dog,” Hellhound whispered to herself, cementing the term as part of her legend.


	2. stubborn beast - bear's den

Some people find refuge in the embrace of another. A parent, a brother, a lover. Some people find refuge in courage. Some find it in habits, healthy or unhealthy or somewhere in that sloshy gray area in between. Some people don’t find refuge at all.

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Persephone Aisa used to believe she found her refuge in family. Not a complete one by any means. A voidblooded child on the streets of a city corrupted by the clawing hands of moral decay would not be safe on her own. But she wasn’t on her own. She had her twin: Leto Aisa, quiet and sensitive with a creative soul. They took new names when they left home. New names to symbolize new lives. New names for a fresh start, away from their barbed-wire parents, their gilded-cage life.

Leto was not good at standing up for himself. He was empathetic, his words falling flat when he tried to sound tough. He didn’t want to fight – he wanted to draw, paint, create beauty out of Duskwall’s dust and grime, make something within its crackling lightning wall that was beautiful rather than bloody… but the two needed to eat. They needed somewhere to sleep when it rained. They needed to stay alive in the midst of gang wars and hungry eyes searching for voidblooded children like them to traffic who-knows-where.

So Persephone picked up the slack. They’d shared a womb, but they didn’t share everything: she had all the fire. Quick to temper and slow to forgive, Persephone did whatever she had to in order to keep her and Leto safe: steal, con, hurt people, a spirited little anklebiter with a cunning mind and fast hands. She was the first to pick up a knife. She was the first to draw blood. But that didn’t mean she was ruthless. Persephone did her best to solve problems nonviolently. She wasn’t good at words, but like Leto, she was empathetic; it was easy to see when hurting someone wasn’t an appropriate solution, when they were more hurt than she was already. An exchange of money or information was a better use of both her and the antagonist’s time.

Logic, already primitive in a child’s mind, was frequently overruled by the pair’s emotions. And when the two hit a roadblock, they chose an option that would change their lives for the worse, forever.

Duskwall was already ruled by a handful of factions: gangs, mostly, peppered with a few secret societies and larger crime syndicates. None of these were more insidious than the Unseen. If the name didn’t reveal enough, the Unseen was of a debatable size – no one knew how many people were in it, who was and who wasn’t on their side, in their pocket, on their payroll. They were rumored to have people in the government, influencing the lord governorship; people in Ironhook Prison, controlling who was and wasn’t put away; people in the bluecoat police force, the imperial military, the goddamn factories. Despite its apparently insidious size, there had never been an information leak.

Now, that wasn’t to say everyone in the Unseen was – well – unseen. Its leader, Sanya Triskel, was comparatively very fucking seen. They lived in the largest mansion in the city. Bigger than the lord governor’s, bigger than the suite the emperor stayed in when he came to visit Duskwall. They were a public figure who wined and dined with Duskwall’s finest, attended nearly every opera, and installed gramophones in their most frequented establishments so that they could listen to jazz whenever they wanted to. They weren’t from Duskwall’s mother continent, the imperialist country Akoros. They had been born in Iruvia, a continent southwest of Akoros whom the imperial military had not gotten their colonizer fingers on yet. Sanya immigrated to Duskwall at an unknown time and somehow managed to become the most powerful person in the world. One arm was made from an unfamiliar white metal, something light and strong that glowed with yellow light. Their eyes, an amber-gold hue, split into two irises when they were angry (So the rumors went. Only an unlucky few had ever seen them angry and lived to tell the tale.) they ruled the Unseen from the public eye, their fingers wrapped around puppet strings attached to every continent in the known world. Duskwall was certainly under the Unseen’s heel.

Knowing all of that, Persephone and Leto decided to try and ask for the Unseen’s help when they finally ran out of scraps of luck. No more benevolent bakers. No more unguarded awnings to sleep under. No more money, no more water. There was only one direction to turn.

The contracts were short and uninvolved, at first. Eavesdrop on this conversation. Report to this messenger. Pickpocket this man’s mailbox key. Run this message to that client. Their orders came from different people every time, as that was how the Unseen worked; no one knew each other’s names or faces, only the right thing to say. As time went on, though, their jobs became increasingly more precarious. Persephone broke her arm trying to escape a client angry with the news she brought him. Leto was reduced to tears over and over again, and they had no one to tell that it was too much. They couldn’t ask for help from colleagues whose names, faces, and locations they didn’t know. Nobody talked to Sanya, of course – such a huge organization meant that very few members of the Unseen interacted with them directly.

The twins were teenagers – thirteen or fourteen, she couldn’t remember anymore – when they finally decided to escape. The Unseen had proved too dangerous to stay in while planning a future for themselves. Persephone spent days charming the booth worker at the floating city’s airship docks enough to get herself and Leto tickets off of the continent altogether. No more Duskwall, no more Akoros, no more Unseen. Besides, other people had left the gang before. Some had retired, some had quit, all without much fuss from the gang at large. The twins had no belongings other than a few keepsakes from home: a small framed painting for Leto; a mostly-empty bottle of cologne for Persephone that smelled like a pine forest; the clothes on their backs; each other. Leto, with his nubby black horns, Persephone with her smoking hair.

The night before their departure, they sat in their assigned room in an Unseen safehouse and drank clean water from a shared pitcher.

“Where d’you think we’ll end up?“ Leto asked, scratching at the base of one of his horns. His skin was drying out now that it was getting colder, and the horns area itched like crazy. One of his paintings sat drying next to them, its corners weighed down by rocks. Duskwall, but with a sky lit by brighter colors than the shattered sun would normally allow.

“I don’t know.“ Persephone was still having trouble hiding her ritzy Brightstone accent. It was the quickest way to peg someone for a runaway kid, the quickest way to get yourself kidnapped for ransom and thrown back home. She had to speak slowly, if she talked at all. “Maybe … mm. Severos?“

“You just want to pet the horses, Seph.“

“I also wanna eat all the fruit.“

“All of it?“

“Well – I mean – yes. But they can grow more after that.“

Leto smiled, covering his mouth with a hand to hide the grin. Persephone hated that the world had made her brother so self-conscious. She cracked a smile back with an involuntary little chuckle. This … this was the happiest she’d felt since before they’d joined the Unseen. It was her and Leto. Nothing could stop them.

The last thing Persephone remembered from that morning was the cool breeze of a hopeful dawn, before she and her brother were dragged away with sacks pulled tightly over their heads.

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Hellhound, the Hunter doesn’t find refuge in much of anything.

Once Persephone became a sleeper, anger and grief arose in her place to form the shape of a woman fed by liquor and fury and unhealthy loyalty. She and Leto haven’t talked in almost three years. It’s better that way, to hellhound; if Leto hates her, he won’t share the cloud of shit-hits-the-fan bad luck that seems to follow her everywhere she goes like a hungry stray. He does not know what has happened to turn Persephone into hellhound. If he knew, he would be killed. It’s as simple as that.

Attachment is weakness, as far as hellhound is concerned. The deeper a bond becomes, the more vulnerable both parties become to demons and prying eyes; if you care about no one and no one cares about you, then the only person your enemies can go after is yourself. Yes, hellhound has a brother. I heard she doesn’t give a damn about him, though. They haven’t even spoken once in three years.

 _Better that way,_ she repeats when the longing threatens to eat her alive. _Better that way, better that way._


	3. mercy - hurts

Sometimes, Persephone woke with a start in the middle of the night, positive it hadn’t just happened; positive she could feel her fingers, roll her shoulders. She’d wake to a room empty except for her vigilant attendant and the sound of a ticking clock. To bandages and stitched flesh, to the sinking realization that her body was still incomplete.

Sanya changed the bandages themself one night. Persephone’s attendant was meticulous and careful as usual, but she pulled the bandage a little too tight and Persephone gasped. In an instant, Sanya’s footsteps crossed the room. Something forced itself into her mind – an intrusive flashback, those footsteps _ – _

_ Measured, calm – her brother’s blood spattering the white metal – a cold hand gripping Persephone’s upper arm and pulling until she tore in two. _

She came to awareness only a moment later in a sweat, waking to the same cold hand wrapping her newly-rebuilt shoulders in fresh bandages. They could have been a completely different person inhabiting Sanya’s body. The touch was incredibly gentle, as if she were someone they cared about. As if they didn’t want her hurt. They stopped any time she flinched at the feeling of the metal on her skin, waiting for the spasm to end before patiently continuing, and any time she moved she feared what would happen… but nothing did. No punishments. No retaliation. They moved on to the other shoulder, skin brushing against hers, their dusky tobacco smell enveloping her in a strange sense of comfort.


	4. lanterns lit - son lux

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Content Warnings:  
> Major Character Death  
> Parental Abuse Mention

She was hidden behind a mirror.

Light refracted off of its reflective surface and showed Persephone her own face, gaunt and pale from the lack of a sun. Shiny black hair coiled into smoke around her chin. She kept it cut short – it stayed out of the way when she tucked it behind her ears. Moreso, Leto said it looked professional, and Sanya Triskel had finally assigned Persephone a long-term job for the Unseen. A chance to prove herself.

Years of loneliness had transformed into fairly solid loyalty to Triskel. Say what you will about them, but they take care of their own. Sanya had personally guided every step of the recovery process after Persephone lost her arms; they had taught her how to shoot, how to write, how to pick up a fork with her new arms. They had kept her comfortable in their manor, attended to her every need, trained with her every day, deftly dancing around her with their lance sailing through the air. All of this from the leader of an international crime syndicate – they took the time out of their year to lavish Persephone with attention and direction. Now, they were her compass.

It was described to her as a protection gig. Persephone would be the personal bodyguard for a voidblooded noblewoman for an indeterminate length of time. She wasn’t told why the girl needed protection, only that her parents were allies of the Unseen and so the job would be done to the best of their ability. “I don’t… like killing people,” she told Leto while he cut her hair for her first day.

“You still might have to kill people,” Leto retorted, ruffling Persephone’s hair to fluff it out once he finished cutting it.

“Sure. But it’s to keep someone safe. And I don’t have to kill them.”

“You’re not gonna be able to avoid murder if that’s what Sanya wants you to do.”

“I can try, can’t I?”

“just… be careful,” Leto said, his hands pausing on her shoulders, carefully avoiding the scarred area. “Please. I love you too much to watch them hurt you again.”

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Now, Persephone stood in front of a large mirror in the noble’s sitting room, one hand resting on her rifle as she perused the books on the shelves. Old books. Novelties, classics, trophies for the astute literary collector. The walls were decorated with surrealist landscape paintings. But there was no woman to be found – no bedroom, either, despite the parents’ insistence that this was the right door.

“You’re a criminal, aren’t you?”

The voice came from somewhere behind the mirror, soft and melodic with a touch of hesitance. Persephone looked up towards the reflection with a furrowed brow.

“I am,” she replied.

“What kind?”

“Assassin. Usually.” Persephone had never been the type to mince words.

“Do you enjoy it?” The voice drifted from the right side of the mirror to somewhere further left.

“No.”

“I thought all of you criminals enjoyed it.”

“I don’t enjoy much of anything.”

“Hmm.” A pause from the voice. “if you wanted to kill me, how would you do it?”

Persephone remained silent, rendered speechless in hesitation. The voice sighed – “What? I am curious. Being locked up in here is a complete bore. Come on. Be honest.”

“I…” she began to reply, but nerves gripped at her throat. “I don’t know. You don’t have any windows up here, so I couldn’t shoot you as I normally do. Smash through the mirror and use a knife to slit your throat, if we’re going with effectiveness.”

There was silence for a moment, then the sound of footsteps and a soft thump. Like someone was sitting down.

“Alright. You are hired.”

“I –” Persephone stepped toward the mirror, plopping down in an armchair propped up across from it. “I was already hired. Your parents –”

“ – have tried to get a protection detail on me for months. I’ve sent away everyone else.”

“Then…” another pause, as one carbon fiber hand moved to rub at the back of her neck. “Why are you keeping me on?”

Silence, for a few moments.

“Call it a hunch?”

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It took months for the girl – Aya – to pull the mirror down and show Persephone her true self. Short and plump in stature, she had a short bob of feathery black hair and an inquisitive gaze. Moles dotted her face and her arms where her somewhat-archaic sense of fashion left them exposed. Most striking, however, were the two giant raven’s wings jutting out from her shoulder blades, holes having been sewn into the back of her dress to accommodate them.

No wonder she needed protection.

The feathers were inky and iridescent, sourced from the Void just like the smoke coming off of Persephone’s hair. She had never seen anything so beautiful. Suddenly, looking at this radiant woman, every flaw upon her own face and body felt prominent – her bony, long-limbed stature, unusual height, the gnarled scars along her torso where flesh met prosthesis. At her invitation, Persephone vaulted through into Aya’s brightly lit bedroom. The windows were false, shining with warm light from an artificial source and decorated with realistic paintings of coastal landscapes.

Aya stepped deftly around her. The wings made a soft shuffling noise as their tips dragged along the hardwood floor. Above them stretched an unusually high ceiling, the walls closer to it jutting with decorated platforms in gold plate. “Make yourself at home, bodyguard,” the girl said as she neatened the writing materials on her desk. Three empty ink bottles and one half full. A snapped quill. Journals lined up on the shelf above the desk, organized by the shade of the leather that binds them.

“This room…”

“We have been cultivating it for my whole life. This is the closest I can come to being happy without going outside.”

“You–” Persephone’s words stopped, pale eyes darting from the ceiling light back to Aya’s face. “You’ve never gone outside?”

“Not even once. My parents are well-known among the city’s nobility. If people knew they had a voidblood daughter, it would be over.” The words sounded too flat, like they had been rehearsed time after time. The isolation Aya must have felt all these years… the frustration, the pent-up anger, Persephone could only imagine. What a living nightmare.

“I’m sorry.”

“Oh, it isn’t so bad. I have my parents… my attendants. And this isn’t forever, just until they enact policy that protects people like us. I want to see the sun for myself, not simply feel its light through the windows.”

Ah.

Her parents hadn’t had the heart to tell her that there was no sun, then. That meant they had no plans of ever letting their daughter outside: they kept her living a lie, and Persephone was willing to bet that they believed it would make her happier. Little did they know, there were things about Duskwall that made its darkness worthwhile. The glowing, multicolored mushrooms she sometimes found on rotting rooftops. The multitudes of stars deep beneath the Void Sea’s inky surface. The rain on her face, the brine-scented bustle of dockworkers as they carefully loaded and unloaded cargo. The sight of the rest of the world, far below the floating city, inaccessible but beautiful when the clouds parted.

Aya would later claim that she had fallen for Persephone first. The assassin did not agree. Neither of them could put an exact date on their feelings, but it was somewhere around that first month, even before Aya had revealed herself. She made the first move, of course – Persephone had always been hesitant with affection, fearing backlash due to a violent childhood, and it became obvious over time that she would not initiate.

It was a quiet winter night. Snow collected on the manor’s roof and drifted down outside of walls without windows, turning gray on Duskwall’s sooty streets. Persephone stood guard by the mirror-wall while Aya pressed dark-blooming snowdrop flowers, her wings splayed out on the bed around her. A small smile played at the corners of the bodyguard’s lips at the sight.

Somehow, in the heart of this rotted city, innocence had been preserved within one beautiful girl. Aya caught her staring. Dark eyes glancing over as a flush bloomed across her cheeks. “What are you looking at?” she asked, voice taking on a playful tone.

“Nothing, Feathers.” It was an affectionate, teasing nickname; Persephone found herself using it more often than even ‘Aya,’ as she often did with those she interacted with daily. it came with the territory of having a complicated relationship with your own feelings. Distance was key as an assassin. You wanted to stay unbothered, separate people from their humanity. So, nicknames. Aya narrowed her eyes, her round face scrunching up a bit. Then, she seemed to get an idea. Never having learned to put on a social persona, her emotions danced across her face with reckless abandon. Persephone could always tell what she was feeling, what she was thinking about, even after only a month observing her.

“Hmm.” There was a low hum from Aya’s throat as she stood. Her wings shifted back into a folded position at her back (it was simply a reality that black feathers littered the floor, bed, and surfaces of the room. Aya did her best to clean them up, but they always seemed to be in abundance. The more the merrier, in Persephone’s eyes. They looked like jewels.) False sunlight haloed Aya’s hair as she trotted up to her guard, Persephone’s heart beginning to flutter in her chest in a way it never had before. It felt like it was trying to break loose.

“Nothing?” Aya teased, voice like honey, breath tickling Persephone’s yet-unscarred neck.

“I –”

“I’ll ask you again.” She was giggling between words now, but still there was a fire in her eyes as she gently tugged Persephone’s collar to bring her down towards her own face. Mouth at the guard’s ear, she whispered, “What were you looking at?”

The word left Persephone’s lips, quiet and breathy. “… I was watching you.” No sooner did she murmur the last word than Aya’s lips closed around hers.

That moment lingers in her mind now, a little piece of gold embedded in her heart to call upon when darkness threatens to choke the spark from Hellhound’s soul.

Persephone’s hair was unusual in more than one way. She would wake up after nightmares or flashbacks and it would have grown to her shoulders, sometimes halfway down her back after a particularly stressful night. Aya took up Leto’s mantle of cutting it after the two became lovers. She liked the way the strands dissolved into smoke between her fingers once she snipped them loose, and Persephone liked the way Aya’s hands felt brushing against the back of her neck. In return, she’d run her fingers through the girl’s wings until they both fell asleep. Aya would braid tiny feathers into Persephone’s hair, fastening it with pins as the ends were too incorporeal to hold a ribbon.

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The girls sat together on the bed one night, deeper into Duskwall’s still winter. Persephone lay across Aya’s lap as she polished her knife – she only carried one, back then, as fear did not relegate her every move. Jasmine perfume gently enveloped them both. It had grown to become a comforting smell; Aya wore it all the time. It was hers, uniquely hers. A trait that, like black feathers, Persephone would always associate with better times.

Aya hummed, as if she’d suddenly had a thought; her hand moved to the tail of Persephone’s coat, flipping it so that the inside showed. “Would you mind terribly,” she asked, “if I made an alteration to your coat?”

“I wouldn’t,” Persephone responded, running a hand down the thick curves and folds of Aya’s waist. “What trick do you have up your sleeve, feathers?”

“It’s a surprise. Give me two days.”

“You’d better not make it a vest or give me a chest window.”

“No promises, love. I would die to see you with a chest window.”

Aya would toil away in her bedroom for the next two days while Persephone stood guard in the library just outside. What a whirlwind of a half-year it had been. Love. A love that felt so warm she was certain it was keeping her alive. Leto’s love was different – the love of her brother was like a pillar of strength. They leaned on each other. They helped each other up when they fell. The love of their parents had been cold, and it ached deep in her chest to know that they could do such awful things to their children in its name. Every bruise that bloomed across Leto’s arms, every cut at the base of his skull that she should have been too young to know how to patch up. “we love you,” their father had said, and the words felt hollow.

But Feathers – Aya – had Persephone’s heart in her hands. She held it as gently as one would a baby bird. With Leto, Persephone was content. With Aya, for what felt like the first time in her life, she was happy.

The alteration Aya had worked so hard on was a set of embroidered autumn crocus flowers stitched into the coattails’ lining. The work was meticulous. She’d always had an eye for detail. Purple and green and gold thread lined up in rows that turned into silky blocks of color, every line was a work of art in itself. Persephone sat hard on the foot of the bed with the coat in her lap, wishing she could feel the flowers’ ridges as her prosthetic fingers brushed over their surface.

“Aya –”

“Mm… I love when you say my name.”

A little smirk, and Persephone raised her eyebrows. “Feathers.” The rollback earned the pout she wanted to see, before she leaned up to press a chaste kiss to Aya’s lips. “I love it, Aya. Thank you.”

It wasn’t often she caught the little bird off-guard. Those rare moments were all the more precious; Persephone burned Aya’s blush into her mind, took in every detail of her face. The two moles dotting the left side and the dark pools of her eyes. The way her short hair hung in sheafs around her ears, thick and shiny like bundles of black grain.

“Don’t look at me like that,” Aya said. Her voice had dropped to a near-whisper.

“Like what?”

“Like you see right through me.”

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“You’re meeting them at the opera?” Leto asked, his head craned over the sink as he began to file down one of his horns. He had been dumped again. The boy went through boyfriends like a learning magician goes through decks of cards; he was noncommittal, and unlucky to boot. Persephone was halfway through sliding her lanky body into a tailored suit with silver cufflinks provided by Sanya themself.

Wolf heads linked by delicate chains. Looking back, it was a message she was too stupid to see. Barreling toward the goddamn iceberg but too busy staring up at the stars to notice it. Sanya’s important meetings with Persephone took place often at the city’s most luxurious venues. Jazz clubs and opera houses were among the most frequent, as they held Sanya’s interest. This time, they sat in balcony seats at the opera, discussing the progress of the job in between acts.

“You are doing so well, Persephone.” They spoke without looking at her. Their left arm was folded primly in their lap as the right – prosthetic, made of gleaming white metal – brought a pair of binoculars down from their face to rest on their knee.

“Thank you,” she replied, a little flutter of pride erupting in her chest. A job well done. A lover waiting at home. Home –– the word felt alien. Exciting. It was the kind of word most people took for granted, until they were ejected from every place they attempted to settle into. Eventually, there was no such thing. But now… perhaps there could be.

“… the job has changed.”

Persephone tilted her head up to meet Sanya’s gaze, their molten-gold eyes boring into hers with a perfectly unreadable expression, the opera house’s warm light casting a glow over their dark olive skin. Changed? After everything, after her undying loyalty to Sanya had been cemented during her recovery, Persephone dare not question them. If they told her to fling herself off of a balcony, she would be confident that they would take care of her until she was healed. They would not let her die after spending so much time and money reconstructing her into a better fighter after losing her arms. At the same time, if she did rebel, Leto was within their reach. They could hurt him, kill him or worse at any time.

“What’s the new job?” Whatever it was, Persephone could still visit Aya as frequently as time allowed. Even if Sanya sent her to Skovlan or Severos across the sea. She would come back; they had nothing but time.

“Oh – it is the same target. The job has changed from protection to assassination.”

“I’m sorry?”

“Do not make me repeat myself, Persephone. You have twenty-four hours to kill her.” The opera was over. Sanya was already standing, rosy yellow lights gleaming off of the pauldron sitting atop their metal arm. Persephone did not stand. Assassination. That was not misheard. Kill her. The same target. Assassination. The job. Kill her. _Kill her._

A cold hand on her shoulder broke Persephone out of her reverie with a flinch, but the spasm did not make the touch any gentler. Sanya’s fingertips pressed into the area where flesh and metal came together, pressed against the scars and the nerves that caused phantom pain for days on end. They did not stop until she gasped. _Kill her._

“Ah, and be sure to deal with the family afterwards. Frame it to keep eyes off of the unseen. Make it quiet. Hawthorne will pick you up in a carriage at exactly this time tomorrow, my Persephone.” Their words, so flippant, rolled off of their tongue as they exited their row. _Kill her._

You couldn’t last forever, could you, blackbird?

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Aya could tell something was wrong the moment Persephone walked through her door. Eyebrows knitting together, she worried at her lip, but internal reassurance seemed to win over her concern.

“How was your meeting?” She asked, soft hands moving to pull Persephone’s coat off of her shoulders. The brisk cold of spring had fluffed her wings up to twice their size. Even now she was beautiful. Even in her idle moments, when she had not yet started her hygienic routine, everything – everything was beautiful.

It was a special kind of fate that befell people like them. People who were born, kicked in the teeth repeatedly, and then died. Some were born hopeful; that was when it hurt to watch them be torn apart in life’s jaws. Persephone did not respond. She was too busy going through every possible scenario in her mind: betray her loyalty to Sanya for Aya, and they would undoubtedly be angrier than they were when the twins tried to leave. All three of them would end up dead or worse. Sanya would make sure Aya died slowly. They would make sure Persephone watched. Then, they would turn to Leto.

Even beyond the consequences, something in Persephone had broken when Sanya took their metal arm to her shoulders and tore her limbs from their sockets. Something had broken, and it had healed wrong; their hands were still buried deep in her chest, wrapped around her from the inside. She didn’t know what she wanted. She didn’t know how to rebel anymore.

It had to be done. It had to be done or the world would come crashing around her feet.

“Aya,” she whispered, voice breaking halfway through the word. Her arms found her lover’s shoulders, pulled her closer. Aya. Blackbird.

“Darling –” her voice was muffled in Persephone’s chest, wings and shoulders wiggling in her grip to try and break it.

“Please. Please, just – stay with me like this.”

Aya looked up at her, wide eyes searching her face and finding nothing to latch onto. “… alright.”

Something seemed to click in Aya’s head after that desperate moment. She stopped asking. There was a look on her face that shifted between acceptance and a haunting sort of emptiness; she knew, Persephone had no idea how she knew but she did. Aya had always been smart, perceptive. She could read people like no one’s business.

Every passing hour felt like sand slipping through their fingers on that last day. Persephone hovered around her lover relentlessly, grooming her wings, pulling her into her lap, pressing kisses to every part of her impossibly soft face and body. Soaking in the smell of jasmine and letting her lips feel the softness of Aya’s skin where her hands couldn’t. They carefully avoided the subject of what was wrong, and instead made the most of every second, every breath. It felt like a dream.

So many nights, now, are spent reliving that last day. Hellhound listens to the heartbeat of a ghost and tries to recall what it felt like to kiss her. All that’s left is a single black feather adhered into a page of her notebook, cast over in resin so that the edges will never begin to disintegrate. All that’s left is a phantom in Hellhound’s subconscious, who appears on occasion to draw her out of dark places and keep her from being swallowed whole. All that’s left is memory.

⚘⚘⚘⚘⚘⚘⚘⚘⚘⚘⚘⚘⚘⚘⚘⚘

They stood in front of Aya’s favorite false window. Persephone was behind her, gaze fixed on the scene in front of them. Its artificial sunlight swathed them in peachy gold, a forest landscape with trees stretching high into the sky meticulously painted on its surface. The light source was structured in such a way that it looked like it was filtering through the treetops, dappling the girls’ skin and catching on their clothes and hair like spun stars. This was their final hour.

Aya would die without knowing the world was dark. That, if anything, was a mercy. Sluggishly, Persephone slid the knife she’d had since she was a child out of its holster on her thigh, gripped it with a hand that, were it made of flesh, would be trembling too violently to function. Gods knew the rest of her body was.

“I can hear your heartbeat.” Aya’s voice came soft, head turning the smallest bit so that Persephone could see the hint of her eyelashes haloed by light. They were slick with tears. “It’s okay, love,” Aya whispered. “It’s okay.”

Persephone didn’t even need to apologize, and Aya had already forgiven her. There was nothing crueler than this. Nothing crueler than the shaky way the girl drew her last breath before the blade cut across her throat. Nothing crueler than the way she gripped Persephone’s other hand in hers, the quivering of her fingers a gentle betrayal to the fear she was trying so hard not to show.

They were both pretending to be stronger than they were, it turned out. Persephone gripped Aya’s bleeding body as she collapsed to the floor, her throat choking with quiet, muffled sobs. It wasn’t supposed to be like this. It wasn’t supposed to end this way.

It wasn’t supposed to end this way.

It wasn’t supposed to end this way.

It wasn’t supposed to end this way.

It wasn’t supposed to


	5. who are you - svrcina

It was an unusually warm day when Persephone set out for her new mission. It was a simple, long-term seduce and destroy (or sway, but that was unlikely). A chance to prove herself to Sanya, prove her place in the Unseen as more than just a sharpshooter. She’d climb the ranks and make things better for her and Leto, hopefully distracting herself from the sharp and gnawing pain of Aya’s absence. 

The target was Adeodatus Damiana. Set in stone to be the next Lord Governor, he was charitable and kind, known for spending time in the low-crime family-oriented district of Charhollow. His scruffy look and Southern drawl only added to his rustic charm; he walked, talked, and socialized like one of the people in the poor districts he so often frequented because he had come from the poorest of them. It was unprecedented that a man from the slums would rise to a level of wealth and power that he did; starting out as an independent criminal, he’d soon make his name murdering the leaders of gangs higher and higher up the ladder. 

_ Kingkiller.  _ In those days, he had been the subject of every week’s Times front page. He was a respectable killer, if there was such a thing, managing to dismantle large-scale gangs simply by offing their leaders and moving onto the next. Now, he was a rich man with political views that pleased his many loyal fans. Duskwall was absolutely enamored. Of course, a man like that is bound to make enemies. Someone with such tight and lofty ideals especially. How about Sanya Triskel, leader of the Unseen? There’s an enemy to make. 

Persephone knew it was because he was unlikely to be swayed to their side that Sanya was sending her in particular. The plan A was to bring Adeodatus into the side of the Unseen, to turn him into one of Sanya’s many puppets. If he remained a wild card, however, well… the seat of Lord Governor was far too valuable to hold a wild card. It would be easy enough to kill him if he refused. Slit his throat in his sleep or snap his neck when he didn’t expect it – she’d be close enough to blindside him by then, anyway. And no matter how charitable, she didn’t particularly give a damn who she killed. Not after Aya. Very few things felt like they mattered anymore. A gun, a knife, poison – whatever method was necessary. Persephone would see it done. 

Except for her beloved sniper rifle, of course.  _ Abra Cadaver _ would remain in Leto’s workshop for the duration of this mission, where Persephone knew it was safe. He did not know what she was setting out to do. Telling him about a job that involved seduction felt … odd, to say the least, and it wasn’t something she was comfortable talking about; besides, there wasn’t much time to do any preparation other than learning everything she could about Damiana before it was time to get in position.

The warm breeze fluttered against her skin as Persephone sat on a tattered blanket in Charhollow, her normal eelskin and carbon-based hull arms replaced with primitive, clunky metal ones. They shot pains through her shoulders. They didn’t feel right, but then – she was playing the part of a poor but brilliant armless girl, a beggar. It was a necessary commitment. Persephone had been at this for  _ weeks, _ and Damiana hadn’t yet visited Charhollow; she survived on what she could beg for and what she could steal. It was a familiar way of life. She and Leto had been expert beggars before they’d joined the Unseen. Another reason for Sanya to send her out rather than anyone else, she supposed.

Just as the girl slumped her back against the building behind her little blanket nest, there was a loud clatter as coins dropped into her metal collection cup. A tall, bearded man in a sharply-cut suit stood back up, gazing down at Persephone with – not pity, but something else unrecognizable in his eyes. It was unmistakably him.  _ Adeodatus Damiana.  _ Formerly the Kingkiller. He was much taller than she had expected. Persephone was only twenty-one, but she already towered over most everyone other than her twin, Leto. Now, she could see even from her position that Damiana was even taller than they were. Strong, too, his well-cut suit showing off arms that could likely crush a skull if he tried.

His eyes were dark, guarded … but kind, nonetheless. He extended a hand, gaze trailing from her ice-chip eyes to the ends of her cropped black hair, emitting smoke that curled around her pale face.

“What’s your name, darlin’?”

She’d practiced her cover a thousand times. “Lethe.” Her voice was quiet, just as cagey as his expression.  _ Thus begins the dance. _

“Adeodatus.”

“I know who you are.”

“Do you?” 

Shit. Was she not supposed to know? No, she should – Charhollow was his turf. Lethe straightened her shoulders, the prosthetics groaning and grating against themselves. Another hour, another jolt of pain down her back. She masked it well. Lethe had experienced worse, after all… much, much worse. Nothing could compare to what it felt like for Sanya to tear her arms from their sockets, slowly, their eyes  _ burning _ – 

“Miss Lethe?” Damiana was knelt beside her now, his hand resting on one metal wrist. He seemed concerned; had she lapsed into a flashback? “I lost you for a moment, everythin’ alright?” 

“Ah –” Her reply was stilted, a little awkward. “I’m fine. Sorry.”

He paused, giving her a sorrowful look, seeming to weigh his options before standing back up. “I’ll be back in just a moment.” He strode off down the road, and Lethe raked her hand through her hair so that her fingertips grazed the scalp hard. Get it together. You’re on a job. This man is your target, you’re two minutes in and you’re already shutting down? What would Sanya say? Lethe clapped her palms to her cheeks a couple of times and straightened her posture, tucking her legs under her body so that she didn’t have to worry about her skirt riding up. You’re a beggar, not a harlot. Wearing a skirt in the first place was out of Persephone’s comfort zone. Skirts were a nightmare. She’d never understood how Aya could wear them, but then again, Aya had looked beautiful –– 

No. Enough. You are not Persephone anymore. You are Lethe, you are Lethe, you are Lethe. A savory smell followed Damiana back to her spot, swirling around him like an aura of welcome. It was remarkable how easily he seemed to get along with everyone he passed. They asked after him, smiled at him, and he returned their kindness twofold. His beard was trimmed, but still out of place for Brightstone nobility… then again, he came from nothing. Adeodatus had grown up an urchin. He’d made his name in crime instead of inheritance.

Lethe had to admit, it was a masterful strategy. He had only targeted criminal enterprises, so as to endear himself to their competition and the Brightstone elites who wanted to clean up the streets. He’d come from nothing, so the poverty-stricken in Crow’s Foot would love him. He was kind and charitable, which meant Charhollow was his. The only enemies he would have made were dead or scattered because he’d killed their leaders. He was smarter than Duskwall gave him credit for. She wasn’t about to underestimate someone like him, disarming personality be damned. 

Damiana sat next to her, handing her a pie from the delicious-smelling bag he’d brought over. The people of Charhollow were notoriously kind to beggars. Lethe had already been given what people could spare – pieces of bread, cans of jellied eels, even a goat skewer, once. It was the most warmth she’d ever been shown, and it was all a goddamn act. She was fooling these people. Lying to them, stealing from them. With a moment’s hesitation, she took the pie from him. Don’t worry, Charhollow. If I do this right, you won’t have to see me ever again. 

“So, miss Lethe,” Damiana murmured. “What’s a smart girl like you doin’ in a place like this?”

She furrowed her brows, tipping her head a bit in response.

“It’s only,” he continued, “I don’t quite understand how someone so lovely can be a beggar.”

Ah. You’re hitting on me. Easy enough. A quiet flush spread across her cheeks, bringing color into her otherwise pallid face. “Oh, I don’t –”

“Now, I’ll have no self deprecation from you. You’re lovely. Anyone ‘round here would say so. And those arms… who designed ‘em?”

Someone in the Unseen had, but Lethe knew them inside and out. “I did.”

Damiana leaned back with an approving nod, that hunger in his eyes that meant he wanted to know more. How did an armless beggar design a piece of machinery? He stood up, leaving the bag of food next to her. That was that, then. “Until we meet again, miss Lethe,” he called as he left, raising a hand in a gentlemanly wave.

Adeodatus visited Lethe nearly every day after they met. He would bring her food, give her money, ask about her carefully crafted persona’s life: she had been a factory worker’s daughter who took over young for her father when he died, learned everything she knew about engineering from him, lost her arms in an accident and used run-of-the-mill prosthetics to design fully-functioning new ones. These were the third iteration, but they still didn’t quite work right. Oh, the factory she and her father had been at? It was the one in Coalridge that had been blown up by the Lampblacks a couple years back. Sorry, she wasn’t sure if anyone who had worked there was still around. Every question had an answer. Every step in the dance she could match.

Finally, after what felt like forever, Adeodatus let his guard down. It was starting to get cold, summer sweeping into fall with alarming swiftness. Lethe had bought a wool shawl with what money Adeodatus had given her, and took to sleeping more often than waking. One chilly Suran morning, he came by in a goat-drawn carriage and invited her to his home in Brightstone. It was nothing close to Sanya’s manor. Three stories, larger than most could ever afford, but juxtaposed against their castle it looked like a modest flat. Even so. Being surrounded by so much wealth still made Lethe painfully aware of what she looked and smelled like.

As if he could tell what she was thinking, Adeodatus led Lethe down a hallway to a large set of doors as a single attendant brought her things to another part of the house. “You can draw yourself a bath here, and freshen up if you like. I’ll be just down that hallway, workin’ on some shippin’ arrangements.” With that, Lethe was left alone in a bathroom with hot, running water and a whole set of bottles, sponges, materials for her face and body. After she brushed her teeth, Lethe soaked deep into the bathtub, her hair spreading smoke across the surface of the water. It hadn’t grown in months. Not since she’d killed Aya, after which it had grown nonstop for weeks and weeks as Persephone collapsed into grief. Now, she was numb. Numb enough to feel nothing about the eventuality of killing the most morally sound candidate for Lord Governorship Duskwall had ever seen. She scrubbed her arms with a soft sponge, watching the dirt slough off and cloud the water – feeling the stain of Aya’s blood still. That was a stain that would never wash clean. She’d killed her. Murdered her. Slit her throat and watched the life drain from her eyes, Aya, her little bird.

Persephone didn’t even realize she was crying until a knock came at the door and her face was wet with saltwater. She dunked underneath, letting its warmth calm the swelling before dragging her hands down her face so that she could open her eyes. The water was so clouded that her body was not visible, and the black smoke from her hair had spread across its surface as it always did across water. “Yes?”

“It’s me.” Adeodatus’s smooth drawl behind the door. 

“Ah – come in.” Lethe sank to her neck so that the scars marring her collar and shoulder blades were not visible.

Hair mussed and tie loosened, Adeodatus opened the door, a soft towel over his arm. He eyed the smoke curling out of the surface of the bathtub with mild fascination before setting the towel on a stool next to her. “Everythin’ to your likin’, miss Lethe?”

“Yes, thank you.” You’ll be ours or dead soon.

“Good, good. Glad to hear it. Listen…” He leaned against the counter, regarding Lethe with a soft expression. “You’re welcome to stay here as long as you like. It’s gettin’ cold, I – I can’t imagine you’d have a fine time out there. My apologies if that seems a touch forward.”

“Here...?” Lethe couldn’t hide the surprise in her voice, and sank a little lower into the bathtub. “I don’t …” 

“I knew it. I’m bein’ unsavory.”

“No, it’s – it’s alright. If it wouldn’t be a bother, that … would be nice,” she murmured in reply, finally looking him in the eye.

Surprise lifted his eyebrows, then something warmer colored his face. It was hard to see behind his beard, but it appeared Adeodatus was blushing. “Not a bother at all, miss Lethe.”

“Just… Lethe. Is fine.”

“Alright. Lethe.” He smiled, genuinely, the expression filling her with warmth. “You can just call me Adeo.”

It took almost a month for Adeo to completely warm up to her. His emotional walls were up high: he must have lost someone, like the girl buried underneath Lethe had. He didn’t want to let her close. They talked, amicably, Adeo having his single attendant set up a guest room for her with a bed that didn’t make her back feel like shit in the morning. The servant did not speak the same language as Lethe and Adeo did. A refugee, he’d explained, who he’d taken under his wing and given work. Neither Lethe nor the attendant were allowed into the study; its door was closed and locked at all times. Until early, wintery Volnivet, that is, when Lethe came from a bath to find the door wide open.

Initially, she was nervous that someone had beaten her to her job and assassinated him in the midst of working. But when she stepped silently through the doorframe, there he was, working intently at his desk. His dark hair was mussed and unstyled from sleep, beard scruffy, shirt open. If they were closer, or if she wasn’t entirely numb inside, Lethe might have been genuinely flustered by the sight. The thought prompted her to act the part, though, arms drawing in to cross over her chest. The clinking sound must have set him off – his pen stopped scratching, and he turned to give her an indecipherable look. Examining, scrutinizing.

“Sorry,” Lethe said, “I didn’t mean to intrude.”

“No, that’s alright.” He scraped back his chair, standing, striding over to her. His height still felt … odd. She’d never met anyone who made her feel this small before. “I left it open for you.” His voice was lower now, smooth like honey and husky from sleep, and before Lethe could take another breath he was kissing her.

It was not …  _ bad. _ It was fine. It felt nothing like the fireworks she’d felt when Aya had first kissed her, but entirely unremarkable. Unremarkable was good. She could work with it, clearheaded, able to act to her fullest extent. Lethe forced a hitch in her breath, tipped her head up to kiss him harder. You’ll be ours or dead soon.


	6. there's something dark - dustin kensrue

Crow’s Foot was burning. Only hours before, the Crow’s Nest Tower had exploded into chunks of flaming stone and wood, by Hellhound’s hand with the aid of three people she would never see again. It would probably be strange, from now on, to look out at the skyline of Duskwall and see it changed. No more would the tower be a symbol of resistance to the Unseen. One more loose end neatly tied. One more drop in the bucket. Sanya would be happy, of course. The job was done, after all. The leaders of the Crows were dead, the tower was no more… so why did Hellhound still feel as if she had a job to do?

That alien instinct carried her across rooftops, down winding alleys littered with bodies and mourners and hurried roadside funeral rites. Misery filled every corner of the Crow’s Foot district. Hellhound had no idea how many people had lost their homes tonight, how many people had buried their partners and their children. She imagined someone picking through a sea of dead faces to find one they recognized. She imagined them stricken with horror as they spotted their lover, cold and peaceful even in violent death, their hands cupping the corpse’s blood-splattered face. It… was all her fault, wasn’t it? All of this carnage. Tierney was their distraction during the mission. While Hellhound’s teammates argued over an amulet in the tower, the Devil started fires and tore Crows apart. He would have stopped on the right command. If she had stopped them fighting sooner, burned the tower sooner. Killed Lyssa sooner.  _ Done _ something instead of sitting back and watching Cicely and Zare and Adelina destroy each other.

No, this was on Hellhound’s shoulders. As most deaths were.


End file.
